Paul Commits the Unforgivable Sin

The ‘unforgivable sin’ is the sin of insulting the Holy Spirit, but to understand exactly how one can possibly insult the Holy Spirit, one needs only to consult the 12th Chapter of the Gospel of Mathew, which is where we hear of the Unforgivable Sin as well as all the appropriate context.

The circumstances were thus: the Pharisees were following Jesus around hoping to find evidence by which they could accuse Him. People of the town brought Jesus a man who was blind and dumb because of demonic possession. Well, Jesus casts out the demon and the inflicted man can suddenly see and speak. The Pharisees, turn this good deed around, supposing it a great crime, by declaring that it is only because Jesus serves the King of Demons that he can cast out demons himself. In short, it is argued that Jesus has power over Evil because he sides with Evil.

Jesus hears these accusations and argues against them, giving some of his most famous quotes in the process. A Kingdom divided against its self will fall. Would Satan drive out Satan?

Anyway, Jesus is highly offended by the accusation that He only does Good in order to deceive people. So Jesus declares emphatically that goodness comes from good people and evil comes from bad people, oh, which is an echo from Mathew 7’s “We know a Tree by its fruits. A rotten tree cannot produce good fruits”.

Jesus is in fact so offended by the Pharisaic Accusation that he goes on further, probably working himself up in a progressing outrage, declaring something of an axiomatic rule, that while anything else might be forgiven, it can never be forgiven when anyone attributes Goodness to Evil.

Why did Jesus get so upset? And why did Jesus take such an inflexible stand? After all, we must admit that it IS possible that people might take up the Cloak of Kind and Good Hypocrisy in order to gain political advantage – to use Acts of Humanity by way of a Deception. But does Interested Motive entirely do away with the Good Results? I think that Jesus saw all of this in a broader and more optimistic perspective. It puts me in mind of what Jesus said of the Hypocrite who makes a great show of his prayers, fasting and public charities, that he will get his reward, a worldly reward, but that the genuine Devotee who acts in greater sincerity will get a better and more spiritual reward. Jesus never supposes that the Hypocrite is Evil for doing Good Deeds for a Worldly Advantage. Jesus even allows such Hypocrites their Worldly Rewards. Goodness is Goodness. Jesus does not begrudge a deserved reward, and while allowing that some Motives are higher than others, finally concludes that there is never a reason too small for doing Good. If a Rich Man wants to show off by giving a beggar a ten dollar bill, the beggar still eats and drinks just as merry as though his benefactor was an absolute Saint. So whatever the motive, God and Jesus would never be silly enough to ever discourage any Act of Human Kindness. They are already rare enough.

Now let us look more closely at the Argument of the Pharisees – it can be reduced to the simple proposition that All shows of Goodness and Kindness can be suspected of being Deceptions of the Devil. What can be the only result of such a flagrant argument than that all Public Charities or even Polite Public Behaviors would be discouraged, and people could only believe themselves to be above reproach while they are mean, nasty and selfish to everybody. It might as well be a Republican Convention.

I think everybody could conclude that Jesus had a better eye and ear for Doctrine, and a better sense for the repercussions that any silly idea could have on an entire body of a Religion if it were allowed to take hold. So he stressed above any other thing that no Act of Goodness could ever be an object of Blame. The Sin against the Holy Spirit, the Unforgivable Sin, was to accuse Goodness of being Evil. If Goodness and Sin were allowed to be so misconstrued, Moral Religion would become impossible.

Now look at Paul’s writings in the 11th Chapter of the Second Letter to the Corinthians. Paul accuses the Real Apostles, the Apostles who had actually been appointed by Christ, he accuses them of only adopting the Appearance of Righteousness, and only in order to present a Deception, just like “Satan who can make himself appear as an Angel of Light”.

Can we see the ramifications here? First, Paul gives us cause to believe that any Act of Human Kindness is more than possibly only a Deception. This is exactly the kind of logic that Jesus most severely wished to condemn, when it came from the Pharisees.

Secondly, with the comment that Satan in fact could and often did systematically counterfeit the Highest Angels of God… well, perhaps no statement of Scripture has done more harm to Spirituality. Ever since Paul spoke these careless words, it has made it IMPOSSIBLE for God to communicate with anybody in a Paulist Church, and be believed. Before Paul, there could be Seers and Profits who were given Revelations from God. After Paul, we can only admit to people who are probably being deceived by Satan pretending to be a Messenger of God. If Paul did not kill God, he did manage to gag Him. It turned a Living Church into a Dead one. After 2000 years, not a new word has been added to Scripture. It is not that nothing has happened, but after Paul, none of it could be any longer believed. Paul’s most lasting legacy has been to cast doubt upon everything Good and Holy.

Oh, and about Paul’s assertion about Demonic Angels of Light… has anybody ever thought of how Paul could ever possibly know such a thing… that sincere and honest people could be Deceived by Demons pretending to be High Spiritual Personages. It seems an odd statement especially coming from Paul, who lays all of his Claim to Fame upon a Spiritual Vision, which, according to his own words, might just as well have been a deception from Satan himself.

Well, actually not. First, we only have Paul’s word that he received any Vision. Secondly, even Paul tells us that the only thing that was said to him in his Vision was that Christ blamed him for being a terrible persecutor of Christians. This was all probably quite true. Jesus struck Paul blind and kicked him off his horse and then berated him for being such a scum bag. What is not to believe? The misunderstandings arise when people call this Paul’s “Conversion”. When did Paul ever convert? When did he even say he ‘converted’? In fact, Paul never changed. Paul never stopped being a terrible persecutor of the True Christian Church. What happened, on the way to Damascus, was that Paul figured out that he could tell the Vision Story just as it happened with a slightly different bent and a much happier ending, and put it all to his advantage. Indeed, if one goes over the Book of Acts, we find that Paul tells of his Vision three different times, and each time he recounts the Story, he tells it differently (Luke must have noticed this, which makes us wonder about Luke’s true loyalty to the Paulist Movement). The Conversion Story became like a joke he would tell. As time went on, he told it better and better. The Truth did not matter so much as the Desired Effect he wished to achieve.

But this only goes to show Paul’s inherent stupidity. With his entire Career depending upon people believing in Visions, he declares that ANY Vision might just as well be Satan appearing as an Angel of Light. When we therefore realize that Paul was stupid, it puts so many other anxieties to rest, in regards to so many other contradictions within Paulist Doctrine and Teachings. We don’t have to agonize about some reconciliation in some Higher Wisdom that only seems like Stupidity to the Worldly Mind. No, we can finally just acknowledge the obvious, that Paul was an idiot. The fact is that Paul spoke at the moment for the advantage of the moment and likely never gave anything a second thought to anything he ever said or wrote, and probably never even remembered anything anyway. He was an opportunistic idiot.

But, to move on, where does this bring us, in regards to Greater Christian Doctrine, that Jesus teaches One Thing, and Paul teaches the exact Opposite. Jesus teaches that Holiness will invariably appear as Holiness and that Demonic Evil will appear as Demonic Evil and that to attribute Goodness to Evil is the Worst of All Sins. Paul teaches that any Act of Righteousness is likely to be a Deception, and that all apparent Messages of God are in fact likely to be horrible deceptions from a Satan who can take any appearance up to and including God (for it had been an old Hebrew definition of God, that He was the Angel of Light).

The Protestants tell us that they believe every Word in the Bible to be the veritable Word of God. But, apparently, whenever there is a conflict, Paul is deemed to be more God than even Jesus is. In Every Protestant Doctrine, and in most Catholic Doctrines, wherever there is a choice to be made between Paul and Christ, Paul is chosen. Why? Well, Jesus was appealing to Righteousness and Spirituality. But the Words of Paul could be used for all kinds of Political and Financial advantage.

Oh, as a last word… I always wonder why no Believing Paulist Christian ever expresses his surprise or shock that Paul whips out the same argument against the True Apostles that the Pharisees had used against Jesus. They SAY they read the Bible, but this could not possibly be true or they would have long ago come to the same conclusions that I have, particularly after catching Paul in passages like these.